Hey all,
I'm here. It was pretty late when I finally got in last night so I didn't get a chance to write until now. My flight out of Miami didn't end up leaving until an hour after the scheduled time because some joker checked their bags but forgot to show up for their flight. Apparently its federal law that a plane can't fly with someone's luggage and without the passenger so we had to wait for them to unload everything they had just loaded and find the two bags. It took forever.
Luckily my ride from Managua to Granada wasn't nearly as long as I expected and my boss picked me up at the airport, which was really nice as I didn't really have to think about transportation. I met most of my host family last night except for my host brother, who won't be back until sometime tomorrow evening. He went to the island of Ometepe for a few days and got trapped there as a result of a nationwide strike against public transportation. Nearly all the bus and taxi drivers are on strike in order to lower the price of gas, which as actually almost twice as expensive as ours in New York. Which is ridiculous considering practically everyone is living off of about $100/month.
In addition to my host mother and her son and daughter, there's also another volunteer staying here as well. Pedro's probably in his early thirties and is from Seville. It's really nice to have him here as he functions as a translator between my family and I. I can understand his Spanish just fine but so far, Nicaraguans prove pretty damn difficult to understand. In addition to their slurred, sloppy version of the language, most of them speak pretty softly and I just have a hard enough time hearing them.
When I woke up this morning I had breakfast with my family and Pedro and then met with my boss, a local woman from one of the communities I'll be working with, and another volunteer who will be working closely with me on a couple of my projects. We spoke a little about one of my communities, Paz y Vida, which I'll get to meet tomorrow and start developing a program. It's a pretty small community, consisting of about 50 single mothers and their kids who are currently displaced and are living in various places throughout Granada and the surrounding area. They've received a grant to help them begin building their homes but as part of the project to create appreciation for the community, as well as self-sufficiency, they have to contribute two workers and help pay for the installation of plumbing and electricity, both of which are pretty out of their price range.
Although I obviously can't really help them out with their financial troubles, I'll be doing my part to try to get them to work together and work towards a common goal. At this point in time, as a result of the cultural norm as well as their extreme state of poverty, none of them really work together, are ridiculously competitive and, needless to say, thus moving in the wrong direction. Many of them don't even know the other women in the community and have lost motivation. So I'll be heading over there tomorrow with Allie to just do a small introduction workshop, get them acquainted with one another, and facilitate a constructive conversation so that they, as well as myself and the non-profit I'm working for, can figure out what their true goals for the community are and how to go about accomplishing them. I'm not too nervous about facilitating the workshop except for possible communication and confrontation issues that could result from our inability to understand their Spanish as well as their highly competitive nature.
Everything has gone fairly well with my family so far. My host mother and her 12 year old daughter are pretty nice and accommodating but I always fear that I'll create problems as a result of two things: my vegetarianism and my complete lack of religion. She has been pretty accepting of my disinterest in eating meat but I fear that I may have sparked some aggression and discontent when she asked me if I was religious and I said 'no.' As my only two reoccurring issues that keep me from completely relating to people in Latin America, it'd be nice if they could somehow be avoided but...yeah, that's pretty near impossible I guess. Everybody here is so damn religious that I feel like they take personal offense when they find out that I am not. I don't really know what to do about it. I don't want to lie and say that I am for fear that they'll later call me out and then just accuse me of being a liar. Ah well, guess I'll just stick it out and hope that all continues to go well with Doña Xiamara.
Hope all is well at your comfy little computer where you're reading this. It's a hell of a lot hotter and more humid here than I was imagining. Not sure when I'll make it back to write to ya'll, but I'll try to keep in touch. Judging by what I have experienced thus far in the last two days and the sheer level of poverty that I'll be working with, I think this will prove to be quite the adventure.
If you want to keep in touch, email me at wra2@cornell.edu and I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible. Love and peace to all.
En solidaridad,
Wren René
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